‘You think Crosby was a rich kid playing at being an artist?’ David asked. ‘Is it impossible to be both?’
‘No, I think he was a broken boy trying to get fixed with all the glue he could get his hands on. And I don’t have any answers, David. I’m just talking.’
‘You seem very well informed.’ David inhaled deeply and leaned his head back, staring up at the sky.
‘Well informed . . . I spent the day lying on a sofa in the library instructing a young man from Istanbul on the art of fellatio,’ he giggled.
‘And what do you make of Crosby’s end?’ David looked up. ‘A dramatic way to go.’
‘ “Of all deaths, the violent death is best”,’ Ellis declaimed. ‘ “For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast / The pain, once apprehended, is quite past.”
‘Crosby was enamoured of the act itself, and there’s a purity in that,’ he went on. ‘ “Die at the right time”.’ He waved his hand.
‘And bravery, I suppose, in a way,’ David mused.
‘It’s getting old that’s brave, young one, not cutting the line,’ Ellis said. ‘Sudden death has a transformative power, it preserves with its severity. Old age is life’s flabby joke.’
‘He certainly seems to have inspired devotion in his women.’ David cast his eyes up to the open window of Caresse’s rooms way above them.
‘We all need heroes. After my father turned out to be the nasty shit he was, I made my hero me. Keeps the cycle of devotion nice and clean.’
‘I find it hard to paint Crosby as a hero,’ David said. ‘Sounds like he gave them a rough time.’
‘A paradox of the highest order. Wants his women both free and enslaved. But women want that too. Not easy in today’s world, by any stretch. Broads have broad minds these days. Which can both serve and complicate the pursuit of a good fu—’
‘Diana.’ David stood as she entered the courtyard and Ellis clumsily followed his lead. Both men took in her body wrapped in black lace, her eyes that were very dark.
‘What an unexpected pairing. Is it a success?’ She looked them both over as David came forward to kiss her and she laced her fingers through his, enjoying the look on Ellis’s face.
‘Join us.’ Ellis spread his arms.
‘Yes, all right, for a moment. But there’s a man I want to say goodbye to, so only a quick drink.’
A waiter in a collarless black suit, his bare feet in moccasins, came over and filled her glass.
‘So what have you been discussing?’ she said, giving them both a smile that suggested she knew the answer.
‘Your stepfather, actually.’
Her face did not move, but David could tell that she was holding her smile in place.
‘And where did you get to?’
‘Women and writing,’ Ellis said, feeling a stirring in his groin as he remembered the look the waiter had just given him. He was on a slick streak this summer. He glanced down at his stomach. Why, he could not think; he felt like an aged pork chop.
‘Well, he was enamoured by both,’ Diana continued. ‘Though show me a writer who isn’t. He’d often read to me from the dictionary – great lists of words: mysterious, macabre, merciless, massacre, morbid, nostalgia, noon, nakedness, obsolete, orchid . . .’ She counted the words off on her fingers with a laugh that did not carry her usual enthusiasm.
‘Words can be a life raft,’ David suggested, his hand flat against Diana’s back.
‘A cruel trick.’ Ellis smiled. ‘They only ever approach, never arrive.’
Diana looked at him without smiling. David kept his hand on her back.
‘And what else did you glean from your stepfather’s study floor?’ Ellis asked her.
She turned her head to the side with a barely visible wrinkle of her nose. ‘Perhaps it’s time you focused on your own work, Mr Porto.’
‘Perhaps you could show me how, Diana, given all you’ve achieved.’
‘I wasn’t educated enough to write properly. Besides, when you’ve lived with a real writer, it can seem like everything else is just making notes.’
‘You rate his work?’ Ellis asked.
‘You don’t?’ she returned.
‘Flashes of insight. But he was messy.’
‘You didn’t know him. He was his work. He lived what he wanted to see on the page, there was no separation there.’ She flicked her eyes over him.
Ellis was quiet.
‘May I look in your notebook?’ Diana leaned over and touched it.
‘No, you may not.’ He swept her hand away.
Her face was a challenge and he laughed it off as he got to his feet, tucking the book inside his jacket.
‘Smeared thoughts, not suitable for eyes of such patrician blue.’
‘You don’t know what my thoughts are like.’
‘Never been less sure of anything in my life,’ he replied. ‘But comparison is death.’ He picked up his glass and drained it. ‘Good night, young lovers.’ He turned, singing a low broken chord, as his form was swallowed into the dark mouth of a hallway.
Lying in the almost dark of Diana’s bedroom, David watched her hand tracing a crack in the wall.
‘Do you ever think about when you’ll die, David?’
‘No, not really. My thoughts are taken up by life.’
She was silent for a while.
‘My mother took me to see a clairvoyant once. He was a baker and lived above his boulangerie in the Latin Quarter. We sat in a room covered in flour as he told her, without asking any questions, that she had been born in 1891, had a daughter of eight, had been married twice, that her husband was a genius but very difficult to live with, and that she would die when she was seventy-eight.’
‘How old is she now?’
She rolled over on the bed and looked at him. ‘She’s seventy-eight.’
He was silent for a moment.
‘I wonder if she remembers?’
‘If it’s something she liked, then she will.’
‘It must have been painful for her when your stepfather left her like that.’
‘Yes, it was hard.’ She seemed to be treading a careful line with her words.
‘Did you know the . . . other woman?’
‘No.’
‘But he still loved your mother?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, turning away from him. ‘They were wholly in love.’
‘Have you had a love like that?’ David had not noticed the sarcasm in her voice.
She shifted onto her back. In the candlelight her expression was rich and confusing, refusing to stay still. ‘Yes. He loved her enough not to give her children.’
‘What do you mean?’ He frowned.
‘He loved her so much he didn’t want her to have children. He wanted her alone, perfect, her womb a vessel that could contain all of his desire, unspilt.’
‘Would you like to be loved like that?’
Diana turned her face to him and smiled. ‘Darling, I think that’s a must.’
She looked away at the wall again. ‘I had a fight once with my mother’s dog. He would sit on a sofa and refuse to look at me. One day I got a rope and whipped it round his neck before he knew what was happening. I pulled him forward and he pulled back with all his might. The muscles of his thin neck were surprisingly strong. He leaned his whole weight back and I heaved with all of mine. Thankfully, the shiny lacquer floor worked in my favour and his feet couldn’t get any purchase. My little leather shoes worked hard and I dragged his stiff body towards the garden. I had to break him. Just like a horse.’
‘A lot of your stories are about animals that end up dead or lost,’ David said.
‘They were the ones I liked the most.’ She turned to him suddenly. ‘Hold me,’ she said.
He pulled her close.
‘Tighter.’
He laughed and did so.
She shook her hair back and laughed too, like someone who has got out of cold water and feels the enclosing comfort of a towel.
‘You won’t leave, will you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, frowning, feeling with dismay a part of himself retreating.
‘But I want you to know that you’re free, David. Keep it neat, but I have no expectations in that regard.’
He looked away, confused. ‘I don’t need you to say that.’
‘I’m not saying it for you. It’s for us. And trust me, it’s for the best.’
Rue de Lille, 1928
‘The doctor thinks you’re going to die.’
Harry stood at the end of Diana’s bed, a bottle of champagne in his hand.
‘What?’ She tried to lift her head.
He sat on the edge of the bed and she laid her head on his lap, feeling the rough cloth of his suit against her cheek.
‘You took too many of those aspirin, greedy Rat. The doctor thinks you could die.’
‘Will I have to go back to school?’ she asked, feeling weak.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t remember arriving.’ She frowned, confused. ‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘The doctor’s very cross with your mother. Thinks it’s all her fault. Now here . . .’ He poured two glasses of champagne and passed her one. ‘Here’s to a lovely little life.’ He emptied his glass. ‘Your mother and I are going to dinner.’
Alderney, 1993
‘Your mother asked to see you,’ James said as Elena and Bay came into the kitchen holding two straw bags full of vegetables. ‘She’s being even more maddening than usual.’
Elena put the bags down on the table and immediately went towards the stairs.
‘Do I not get a kiss?’ James called, and then, ‘No, Bay, you wait down here with me.’
Bay went to sit on the stairs, dangling her legs through the banisters, waiting.
‘Come here.’ Her mother reached forward.
Elena went towards her uncertainly. There was a strange light in Diana’s eyes, the sickly movement of the moon over an unsettled sea. A sickness washed over Elena and she reached out for the bed before she sat on it heavily. Her mother put both her hands over Elena’s stomach.
‘Let me feel it,’ she slurred, and Elena leaned back, not breathing.
‘Sweet little thing,’ Diana crowed. ‘All curled up like a rat in its den.’ She smiled and stared at Elena, who looked away.
‘No, Elena, no, show that pretty face.’ Her mother put a hand under her chin and tilted it upward. ‘The one that all the boys liked. Yes, yes,’ she ignored the shake of her daughter’s head, the rearing away from her grasp. ‘It’s the one everybody liked the best. Even your father couldn’t resist. My worthy successor . . .’
Tired of counting the fine golden hairs on her thighs, Bay felt that she had waited long enough. Standing up, she crept to where her grandmother’s door stood just ajar. She put her head around it and saw that her mother was sitting on the side of the bed, her back rigid, staring fixedly out of the window as her grandmother rocked backward and forward stroking the round of Elena’s stomach and crooning a strange song in a language Bay did not understand.
Rue de Lille, 1929
‘I don’t remember anything more after that.’ In the courtyard, Diana leaned against the solid curves of the Daimler that Auguste was washing with long soapy strokes, his sleeves rolled to the elbow.
‘But you could have died, could you?’ he said, a cigarette clamped in his mouth, the front of his shirt wet.
‘The doctor said it was the worst case he’d ever—’
A noise from above and both Diana and the chauffeur stopped and looked up.
On the top floor of the building a bedroom window had been thrown open with force and shouting could be heard from within.
Auguste immediately turned and began attentively washing the car again, but Diana remained fixed, staring upward.
Her mother appeared in the window and without thinking Diana’s hand raised itself in greeting. But as she did so, half-expecting her mother to shout down a greeting as she normally would, Caresse raised her arms like an emperor at a circus and threw a great pile of paper from the window, the torn pieces scurrying on the wind. She disappeared inside again and there was more shouting, hoarse and wild, from within.
Diana picked a piece of the paper up from where they were scattered around her like enormous confetti.
I want to devour you STOP Will eat nothing until you arrive New York STOP
A movement above caused her to look up and she saw her mother lean right out of the window and put a leg over the railing, the long silk ribbon of her dressing gown streaming out in the wind, her face just . . . anguish. But two arms circled her waist and dragged her back inside, and the window closed with a slam.
Diana looked at Auguste, but he was peering intently at a wing mirror, polishing a stubborn spot.
She turned her gaze down at another piece of blue paper soaked grey on the wet stone.
Death will be our marriage STOP
Roccasinibalda, 1970
The bells were ringing in the town. The round iron clang echoed across the valley and entered the windows of the castle. Down in the village, the streets were deserted to the midday heat as everyone gathered round the small chapel awaiting the bride and groom.
Diana turned over in bed and swept her arm over the empty space beside her. David was already awake. She thought briefly of her mother’s face creased in sleep, and wondered if she’d been in a similar position when he’d got up. She’d tried to teach herself to sleep on her back (‘It will save you,’ one of her mother’s friends said, her gloved hands cupping Diana’s small face), but her body always folded itself closed in the night. She pushed the thought off, deciding not to care, and, easing herself from the bed, walked to the windows to open the shutters. The sky was a clear blue, the hills green and bright. She breathed deeply, listening to the bells going on and on and on. She rolled her neck on her shoulders. A wedding day. Hip hip hooray. But as she stretched her arms above her head she recalled Anthony’s face as he had watched her walk towards him and she smiled sadly to herself. He had never looked at her like that again. She pressed the tips of her fingers against her eyes and, on hearing a knock, immediately swept her hands up and back through her hair, as though refreshed. ‘Yes?’ she called and one of the girls entered with a tray holding a glass of milk and a banana.
‘Oh, you’re wonderful, thank you.’ She went back to the bed and lay down with a smile of satisfaction. She would eat this and then have a bath before going up to see her mother. She squared her shoulders; perhaps a little glass of wine.
‘Have you heard the bells?’ Caresse asked as she sat down opposite her by the wide open windows.
‘Hard not to.’
‘Aren’t they wonderful?’ Caresse breathed, and Diana could hear the wheeze behind it. ‘I lay in bed and listened all morning. Such a sweet couple. They came to see me when they got engaged.’ Her mother shook a handful of pills into her hand.
‘Did you give them your benediction?’ Diana handed her a glass of apricot juice.
Caresse held it up to the sunlight that played across the peeling plaster walls. ‘Look at that colour . . . Of course I did, I adore weddings. Not the church and all that mess, but the union of it. The cosmic balance.’
‘I’m rather off them myself,’ Diana said.
‘Oh, Diana. Your first wedding was lovely.’
‘All I remember is my hair pinching and Maxime being blind drunk by ten in the morning.’
‘Darling, if you marry the heir to a champagne dynasty it’s hardly surprising that people get a little tight.’
‘Tight! I had to untie his shoes.’
‘Yes, men can be rather a bore when they drink too much. Although I could have told you that about Maxime.’
Diana’s nose wrinkled. She did not appreciate her mother pointing out any of their shared interests. ‘Your father and Burt
were absolutely blotto during both ceremonies. It’s often a problem with men . . .’ Caresse’s voice drifted. ‘Harry was the only one who was really there . . .’
Diana looked down at her hands. Her mother had worn long grey gloves and a dress the colour of wet sidewalk to the register office in New York. Nothing white. No bridesmaids. Diana had cried bitterly at that. She’d thought it no wedding at all.
‘I’m done with marriage,’ she said decisively. ‘The whole thing’s a circus. I should have been put off by my first, but I was somehow duped into the whole thing again with Anthony.’
‘What did you wear to marry Anthony? It was a shame that I missed that.’
‘I thought about it this morning, actually.’ Diana smiled sadly. ‘I was remembering the way he . . .’ But as she spoke, her mother’s telephone began to ring.
Caresse waved a hand as she answered and Diana crossed her arms and pulled her mouth to one side, aware that she had allowed herself to drift into an open current. She could hear Roberto’s voice melting through the earpiece. ‘Absolutely not, abbiamo fettuccine . . . a posto . . . abbacchio e cicoria. Sì, veramente . . . ’ Caresse paused. ‘Do use your imagination, Roberto, it’s lunch, not the Geneva Convention.’ She replaced the handset and looked at Diana expectantly. ‘Where were we? Yes, you and Anthony. You were saying?’
Diana shook her head. ‘Nothing. It was a mistake, that’s all. I knew it from the moment I said “I do” in that ghastly Caribbean heat.’
‘St Lucia, wasn’t it? What happened to that little island he gave you?’
‘I didn’t like the sailing so gave it back.’
‘Well, you got Ibiza anyway,’ Caresse said comfortingly.
‘I don’t own it, Caresse, I built a house there. There’ll be no buying of islands now we’ve got this bag of rocks slung about our necks.’
Caresse shook her head sadly. ‘You take a very negative position, Diana. Roccasinibalda will begin to pay for itself as the movement grows. You’ll see.’
The Heart Is a Burial Ground Page 18